“But the heroine is you?”
“There may be some similarities.”
“So I’m to read about my puss making love to another man, am I?”
He kissed her cheek.
“You really are the most singular man in the world, David. Is there no jealousy in you at all?”
By way of an answer David read aloud a line from her handwritten page.
“He was past the first flush of his youth—”
“There, you see,” he said. “My rival is an old man.”
He read on.
“—a youth which had brought him much pain, a good deal of endurance, many longings, which were principally unsatisfied—”
Mabel covered the page with her hands.
“Stop it!”
“An old man, and he’s not happy. But my puss will make him happy.”
“Go away.”
David kissed her again and left her. Mabel returned to her love story.
She had given her hero the name of Henry Arnold and made him an unmarried doctor with a great love for the sea. His only consolation in his sad life was the beauty of nature.
He had no definite grief—nothing upon which he could place his finger, saying: “Here; were this removed, I could rise to joyousness!” But life seemed to hold so many possibilities—of which he could only dream. It might mean a garden of satisfying delights if he could but find the entrance. As it was, he felt himself stumbling about vainly, outside of everything. He saw the high wall; he knew there must be a gate, and occasionally the scent of rarest blooms was wafted over to him. How he longed to enter! How he longed for even one person with whom to speak of the dainty fancies which throbbed through his heart and brain!
Occasionally a rebellious feeling appeared; and he wondered why Providence had been so cruel as to give him wants which were always unsatisfied; questions always unanswered. But in general he was content. Only his clear blue eyes were infinitely sad in their expression, if any had cared to notice—wherefore, he could scarcely have said himself. He thought he had found all that was for him to find, and yet sometimes a wild gleam of possible joy to come throbbed within him.
The story went on to tell how, while walking on a deserted beach, Henry Arnold found two sets of footprints in the sand, the tracks left by a man and a woman. This gave him a sudden vision of the possibilities of true companionship.
He walked onward through the glory of the sunset light, thinking great thoughts which completely overwhelmed him. He could hardly tell what had come upon him; he knew only that suddenly had been born a determination not to settle down into a placid self-content, satisfied with the husk, but missing the sweet kernel of life. He would have it all; and he would never give up the search, if he found it only upon his deathbed.
The search led to the young woman who had made one of the two sets of footprints. Mabel gave her the name of Mildred.
In the clear depths of this young girl’s mind he saw an appreciative sympathy, an understanding of himself and his queer fancies which it had never occurred to him that anyone could have. The joy of being understood was something which had never before come to him. He saw as in a flash that the mysteries of life would be no longer cold and bleak if two could investigate them together. There would be mysteries always, of course; but it was only for one all alone to feel the dreariness of these riddles. This young girl, sitting so calmly beside him, with soft eyes gazing far out to sea, was the one person, the only person he knew, who had ever responded to his subtle thoughts, or to whom indeed it had ever seemed possible to express them. A wonderful joy and tenderness overflowed him; she belonged to him by divine right . . .
Mabel called her story “Footprints.” She was still writing it when it was time for David to leave for the Lick Observatory in California, to photograph the transit of Venus.
“Tell me you’ll miss me,” he said to her.
“Of course I’ll miss you. But will you miss me? Do the astronomers in California have pretty daughters?”
“They won’t be as pretty as you.”
“Maybe not, but they’ll be nearer.”
He took both her hands in his and looked into her eyes.
“I’ve never lied to you, have I, puss? Don’t ask me to start now.”
“I shall just have to find my own company without you.”
“So you shall. And when I’m home again, you can tell me all about it.”
• • •
Mabel’s principal source of company in her husband’s absence was Mrs. Austin Dickinson and her ever-sociable home. Sue kept a bed made up for Mabel at the Evergreens, for those evenings when the partying went on into the late hours. Austin seemed more withdrawn than ever. At whist games and at musical soirees, it was young Ned Dickinson who was always by Mrs. Todd’s side, his eyes shining. When the first real snow came, and the sleigh was harnessed to faithful Tom and Dick, it was Ned who took the reins, and Mabel was always invited to join in the merry sleigh rides.
There were plans for putting on a play, though no one could agree which one it was to be. There were evenings of poetry readings, and more private evenings in which Sue read out to Mabel the few poems sent her by Emily.
“What do you make of that?” she said, offering Mabel a handwritten poem. “Am I really so very mysterious?”
But Susan is a stranger yet—
The Ones who cite her most
Have never scaled her Haunted House
Nor compromised her Ghost—
To pity those who know her not
Is helped by the regret
That those who know her know her less
The nearer her they get—
Mabel felt a twinge of jealousy.
“I suppose we’re all mysterious,” she said. “I mean, none of us can ever be fully known, as we know ourselves.”
“How disappointing! I’d been congratulating myself on being uniquely unknowable.”
“You’re so clever, Sue, I’m sure no one could ever get to the bottom of you.” Mabel hastened to soothe Sue’s ruffled feathers. “But even so, I’m sure you have a secret longing, as I know I do, for there to be someone, somewhere, who truly knows us.”
“Wanting is all very well. But what if there isn’t?” She tucked the poem back into the envelope in which she kept it, folding the paper and inserting it with brisk, neat gestures. “Emily does have a gift, I grant you. Her poems have a certain brilliance. But there’s a lack of finesse. A little too much panting and gasping.”
“She wrote me a poem,” said Mabel. “When I sang for her.”
“Did it make sense?”
“Oh, yes. It’s wonderful. I want to do something for her in return. I thought I might paint her a picture.”
“Paint her a picture by all means. A picture of a ghost, being compromised.”
Mabel laughed a little guiltily. It felt wrong to mock the Myth.
“I’m better at flowers. I thought I could do Indian pipes.”
“You do know you’ll never meet her?”
Mabel heard Sue’s sharp words as a rebuke. She was not to expect any privileged treatment.
“Do you not think so?”
“Emily knows what she’s doing. She has no husband, no children, no position. She’s no beauty, and now she’s middle-aged. A woman like that is commonly to be pitied by all the world, and Emily is proud. She understands very well that she does better to hide away and become a myth.”
“But she does see you?” said Mabel.
“I haven’t set eyes on Emily in years. I don’t go to the Homestead anymore. I can’t bear to listen to Vinnie’s prattle. She doesn’t have a kind word to say about anybody. She lives too much alone. I believe the only creatures she loves in the world are her sister and her cats.”
Austin now entered, followed by Ned. Austin stayed just long enough for politeness, and was gone again. Ned sat himself down by Mabel’s side.
“How does your husband get along in California, Mrs. Todd?”
>
“I can’t really answer you, Ned. I am ashamed to say he writes to me so rarely.”
“But I’m sure he thinks of you.”
“Are you? It may be so.”
“You aren’t easy to forget, Mrs. Todd.”
Ned spoke these gallant words in a mumble, looking at his boots and blushing. Sue saw this with some amusement.
“When does Mr. Todd return?” she asked Mabel.
“Not for another two months at least.”
“Then we must make sure you don’t have too lonely a time of it, mustn’t we, Ned?”
When Mabel rose to leave Ned dared to shake her hand, and received in return one of Mabel’s prettiest smiles. As she made her way down the path to the gate, Austin came after her, to apologize for his earlier brusqueness.
“You must forgive me, Mrs. Todd. Sue tells me I have never learned the social graces.”
As he spoke, he slipped a note into her hand, and returned to the house. On her return to her lodgings, Mabel read the note, in which he spoke the words he dared not utter aloud.
I love you. I love you! Why should I! and why shouldn’t I! Who made and who rules the human heart! Where is the wrong in preferring sunshine to shadow! Does not the unconscious plant lean toward light?
Mabel treasured these notes, which arrived daily. She and Austin were now living two parallel lives, one for the benefit of the world round them, in which Austin remained aloof and they barely spoke; and another secret life that found expression on paper.
Austin was in a state of ecstatic transformation. Mabel’s love for him flooded him with wonder and gratitude. Time and again he told himself it couldn’t be true. How was it possible that this beautiful young woman, who was admired and adored everywhere she went, could have chosen him in the autumn of his years?
When Mabel’s story called “Footprints” was completed, she gave it to him to read. He was astounded to learn how perfectly she understood his inmost heart.
“Every word is true,” he told her. “I am Henry Arnold. I have despaired, just as he despairs. I have found happiness, just as he finds happiness.”
And if he was ever afraid and prone to doubt, there were Mabel’s notes to him—not to some fictional character—but to his very living, breathing self.
You too may be sure of me, of just what and how I am thinking of you and how infinitely I am trusting you. Through and above every other feeling is this wonderful restfulness, expressed by nothing so nearly as complete trust. And I love you—I cannot say how much.
It was all still so new and so precious that he hardly dared examine what was happening to him. All he knew was that this late love, this coming into sunlight after the long years of shadow, was a gift from God. Austin was not given to using religious language, but now he thanked God every day. Mabel’s love had awoken in him a long-dormant self that he knew to be his true being: he was born again, born in the spirit, through the pure and powerful gift of love. This could only be God’s will for him. This was how he knew that it was right, it was righteous, it was holy.
At the same time he understood very well that in loving Mabel he was flying in the face of all that the world considered decent behavior. So much the worse for the world. He saw now with new eyes the falsity, the hypocrisy, of the values of the world. This propriety about which people cared so much, what was it but vanity? His neighbors were so busy judging and despising each other that they left no room for love. And in the end, what else mattered? Austin was waking to the truth that he had been made by God to love, and that in loving he was becoming his truest, highest self. Of course he loved Mabel as a man loves a woman—he trembled at her very nearness—but this was only one part of what was an act of spiritual surrender. Mabel touched his soul. She understood him without words. The majesty of the sky moved her as it moved him. She stood by his side and heard the song of the crickets and told him they were saying, “I want to live.” And in final proof of the seriousness of her nature, when every fresh-faced young man in town was aflutter about her, her choice had fallen on him. If all she wanted was a little flattery, a little distraction, she would not have turned to a man of his years. And turning to him, finding him waiting, their souls reached out to each other and knew each other, and would never now be alone again.
He wrote to her:
It nearly broke my heart to go through the day yesterday with only that passing sight of you.
She wrote to him:
I have been all alone since supper—but not in the least lonely. I thought it possible that you might look in for a moment—at least I knew you would if you could. But I am unaccountably tired. So I am going to sleep now, with the last word you said to me this morning in my heart. I love you more tonight than I have ever done before. It grows and grows into a wonderfully rare and beautiful something, every day richer and stronger and more all-pervading.
He to her:
I do believe you, my darling, and believe you love me as I love you. It was no fault of yours or mine that I could not take this in at first. My experience of life was too firm and encrusted to permit it. It contradicts everything, revolutionizes everything, overturns everything with me—astonishes and overwhelms me as much as overjoys and intoxicates me. I love you, I admire you, I idolize you. I am exalted by your love for me. I am strong as not for a long time before—elastic, well. I walk the street airily and with high pride, for I am loved—loved as I love, loved where I love.
She to him:
It seems as if I cannot possibly bear it until you come. You have waked into an overbounding life things which will not let me rest away from you. It is wicked, as I said, said to you by word of mouth, how far away such bliss looks! To speak face to face with you at this moment. Heaven could hardly offer more.
And what of Sue?
Austin had no qualms on the matter. He had done his duty by his wife, given her a status she had never had before, and a home, and a family. He supported her in comfort. As the world went, he had fulfilled his side of the bargain. But Sue had never given him the deep love he craved. She had never awoken in him the power to love that now so electrified him. Therefore, he reasoned, his name and his worldly goods were owed to his wife; but his heart was his own, to give where it was wanted.
Mabel, however, did have qualms. She tackled Austin as he was escorting her back to Mrs. Robison’s boardinghouse on Pleasant Street.
“I love Sue so much,” she said. “She’s so lively and intelligent. She’s the only fellow spirit I’ve met among all the ladies of Amherst. And yet I see how she is with you. She seems not to mind if you come and go. Sometimes she almost laughs at you. It’s very strange.”
“Strange, if you like,” said Austin. “Common enough, I think. How many married folk live as strangers in the same house?”
“I mean strange that she should not love you. No, that’s not kind. Who am I to say what goes on in her heart? It must be that she loves you.”
“Why must it be?”
“Because you’re the most lovable of men!”
He took her hand briefly, and then let it go. It was dark, but who knew who might be passing, and might see? Their soft-spoken words, at least, were for themselves alone.
“My wife,” he said, “does not care for me to touch her.”
“Not touch her!”
“All her life, I believe, she’s had a great terror of childbirth. Certainly it took much persuading to venture down that path. When she was expecting Ned, she took certain measures—let’s say, she wanted her condition to be over. She was not successful.”
“This is terrible,” murmured Mabel.
“It’s many, many years since Sue and I have been man and wife in the fullest sense.”
Mabel was shocked.
“You poor, poor man. How have you borne it? I can’t bear to think how you have struggled.”
Austin was moved by Mabel’s sympathy.
“Do you truly understand? I thought this was something that women didn’t feel as we m
en do.”
“Oh, yes! I understand. I feel for you. How else do we express love except through our physical senses? I see you, I hear you, I touch you. The more we love, the closer we come to each other, until one day there’s no distance between us at all, and we’re one.”
“Oh, my darling. My darling.”
And yet even now, standing on the snow-covered sidewalk on Pleasant Street, he was too shy to follow the promptings of his bursting heart, and take her in his arms. For all the effusions of their secret letters, they had not yet kissed.
“Be patient,” Mabel whispered. “Our time will come.”
• • •
When Mabel visited the Homestead, carrying with her the painting of Indian pipes done for Emily, she talked with Vinnie about Sue.
“Why is it that Sue and Austin seem so distant from each other?” she asked.
“There’s no mystery there,” said Vinnie. “Sue’s always had a sharp tongue. Would you want to be married to that old scratch?”
“But she’s so lively! Her house is always so gay!”
“Gay, you call it? It’s empty vessels make most noise. Poor Austin has to run away to us here. You should hear what Emily has to say about Sue! And they used to be the closest friends, back when she was Sue Gilbert.”
“What does Emily say?”
“She says Sue married an establishment. All she cared for was the house. Poor Austin! We’ve watched him shrink over the years, like a starving mouse.”
“How can anyone not love him?”
“You know that, my dear. I know it. Emily knows it. But Sue has her carriage and her children and her parties, and need not trouble herself over Austin anymore.”
“If that’s really so,” said Mabel, keeping her eyes lowered, “would you say he has the right to take love where he can find it?”
“I would say,” said Vinnie fiercely, “that whenever any of us meet with love in this pitiful world, it is our right to enjoy it, and our duty to return it.”
“And does your sister think as you do?”
“Emily respects passion in all its forms.”
• • •
In response to Mabel’s flower painting, Emily sent through a note for Mabel, containing a poem.